Posted by Andrew Breitbart Dec 19th 2010 at 10:09 pm in Democrats, Exclusives, Featured Story, Justice/Legal, New Media, Obama, Race, Uncategorized, journalism Both left media and right media are afraid to report the Pigford story.
Those on the left are fearful that BigGovernment.com’s reporting is true – and our biggest detractors are conspicuously silent since we launched our report two weeks ago.
And the right media is fearful of the story because of race.
So far Rep. Steve King is already proving that to discuss Pigford on TV means having to deal with unfounded knee-jerk accusations of racism. First King was swarmed by the left-wing word police for using the word “urban” when describing Pigford legislative champion then Sen. Obama (D-Ill.).
Spend five minutes investigating Pigford the words “urban” and “rural” are integral to report the story.
Then Rep. King was castigated by Anderson Cooper on CNN for using the word “reparations.”
In fact, most of the key Pigford advocates not only use the word “reparations,” but Pigford has been sold to claimants as “reparations,” even at yearly “reparations conventions.”
Accepting the premise that “reparations” was the context that churchgoing folk were rounded up to sign up for Pigford by glorified carnival barkers, who illegally financially profited by signing up prospective claimants for $100 per person per year, will go a long way to explain why so many non-farmers signed up to get a piece of the action. They were fraudulently induced into the Pigford class and, in essence, signed off without reading like many of us do when signing a Blockbuster Video user agreement.
But so far the media has not only been cowed not to dig deeper into Pigford by those who would be exposed as billion dollar fraudsters, the media has been doing some of the heaviest lifting, as evidenced by Cooper’s attack on Rep. King opposite John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmer Association (NBFA).
BigGovernment will not be intimidated by the politically correct police and its hand-maidens in the media. And when the public finds the truth about Pigford, it will be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the PC police and the media actually hurt the “black farmers” they claim to be champions of, when they chose to tell this important story.
So with the media blackout and intimidation against those that would try to force the issue, BigGovernment has come up with a novel arrangement to encourage the blogosphere and the greater media to follow along to understand that the American taxpayer and discriminated-against-by-the-USDA black farmers continue to be screwed by the Agriculture Department, the Justice Department, politicians, class action attorneys and “community organizers,” all who have brazenly and in the open sold out a righteous cause to accumulate political power, line their own wallets and hide uncomfortable national narratives.
Lee Stranahan is an accomplished and well-recognized left-of-center, self-described “progressive” blogger.
He is a regular reporter at the Huffington Post, and was a player at Daily Kos until he reported truthfully on the John Edwards affair. Lee and I have never met in person, but over the last month we have spoken over the phone about 100 times.
It started off as a general discussion on past BigGovernment.com investigations, especially mine, but quickly we just started to get to know each other and found out we had much in common outside of politics.
On a whim I told him about BigGovernment.com’s Pigford investigation, which we had not yet released. I told him how the story is complicated and important, and that the conclusions we’ve reached don’t fit neatly into the polarized right-left media paradigm.
Since much of Lee’s successes in new media have been video based, and his background is on-air graphics, and he has even produced ads for leftie powerhouse MoveOn.org, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to work with him to produce a Pigford documentary.
The BigGovernment.com report is full of details and statistics but what we were missing were interviews with the central players and whistleblowers, many who have begged for media coverage only to be ignored. The cast of characters is rich, and the narrative reads like a John Grisham novel, especially since almost everything takes place in the South.
Our arrangement is simple. I trust Lee to get to the truth. He is using BigGovernment.com’s report as his road map, but he is free to come to different conclusions. We are in constant contact and I am providing the BigGovernment.com resources, including more research from Gary Hewson, Peter Schweizer and me. [For Stranahan’s Hegelian followers, it’s a Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis thing.]
As a result of our agreement, Lee and his wife, along with his three home-schooled children and cats have hit the road in the South, traveling from Dallas, Texas to Pine Bluff, Arkansas to Jackson, Mississippi to Memphis , Tennessee. And that is only the beginning.
All the Pigford principals want to talk so far, including Jimmy Dismuke, a heroic black farmer turned defiant and vocal whistleblower, to Pigford class action attorneys, Othello Cross, and former Secretary of the
Agriculture, Mike Espy – who now represents thousands of those suing the agency he ran during the peak of the alleged discrimination.
Lee even reached out to Shirley Sherrod’s attorney Rose Sanders, who is one of the top Pigford attorneys, and who offered tons of new information in an hour and a half interview. Given that Sanders once accused me of being a “klansman” when Media Matters sought her for comment about my ABC NEWS election night role, I was very interested to hear what she had to say. She didn’t disappoint.
So far everyone on camera is providing incredibly helpful pieces to the Pigford puzzle.
In fact, today we will be offering up something of a blockbuster: One of the key Pigford class action attorneys based out of Pine Bluff, Arkansas admits that many of his own clients “got away with murder.” Othello Cross, who is the key Pigford attorney in Arkansas, the state with the third most claimants, and who represents hundreds of who received at least $50,000 from the U.S. taxpayer, admits on video that at least 10% of his clients — that he knows of — defrauded the government.
Attorney General Holder, are you listening?
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, do you still think there are only three cases of fraud?
So far Lee and I have tested our unlikely media pairing on some talk radio, including a two-plus hour Pigford primer on David Webb’s Sirius Satellite Radio Show. We also appeared with prominent left wing reporter and blogger Tommy Christopher of Mediaite .com on Larry’s O’Connor’s Stage Right BlogTalkRadio program.
Over the coming months BigGovernment.com and Lee Stranahan will be dropping excerpts of his cross-country video investigation. We will also be providing more original coverage including written reporting, raw evidence (“Pigileaks”) and we will draw attention to those outlets that would break the embargo, left, right or center.
In the end Lee will be working with us to create a Pigford documentary. So far the footage tells an amazing story of the black American farmer, a dying breed of unsung hard workers whose contribution to the America is immeasurable, and, unfortunately, going the way of the World War II war hero. On the other hand, we have more than ample video footage to show their justice wasn’t just denied once by the USDA, but by the very individuals and groups who promised to make them whole.
So far this joint exercise in left-right media collaboration has been one of the most productive and enjoyable endeavors of my professional life. I’ve done it before with the Huffington Post. Is there anyone now who doesn’t know exactly what the left wants and thinks? It’s all making for a much more transparent media.
My hope is that this will lead to many more joint investigative ventures that make it so that a story isn’t DOA simply because one side refuses to accept the truth behind it.
Pigford is a story of mind-boggling government malfeasance and corruption and it is not going to go away. Pigford will be exposed.
[If you would like to work with Lee or me, or Lee and me on Pigford media interviews, print, blogosphere, radio or TV, please contact Pigford@Breitbart.com.]
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